Gina Arena

I completed undergraduate, Honours and Masters in Ecology and Conservation at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. My thesis focused on the pollination biology and ecology of an Endangered South African endemic species, Aloe peglerae. After a two-year work abroad stint in America after graduating, I returned to South Africa to pursue a career in ecology and conservation. I participated in the DST/NRF Internship programme in 2016 hosted by SAEON where I was based at Tierberg LTER, in Prince Albert in the Karoo. Here I learnt about and assisted in the long-term monitoring of ongoing vegetation studies in the Karoo. It was through spending time in the Karooveld that I became very interested in and passionate about this environment and its people.

I have now turned my attention to pursuing a doctorate at the University of Cape Town at the Plant Conservation Unit. I am assessing the long-term changes in Nama-Karoo and Grasslands vegetation across a climatic gradient where these two biomes meet in the Eastern Cape. I hope to achieve this by comparing historical agricultural vegetation datasets acquired from farms in this region (collected in the 1950s-1960s) with repeat surveys and repeat photography of these same farms, all in the context of a change in climate and land use for this period. My current research interests fall broadly into understanding how semiarid environments in South Africa respond to drivers of change, particularly climate, land use, and fire through long term monitoring of vegetation patterns. Other research interests have included studying Aloe pollination, population and habitat dynamics.